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[Pre-shatterverse - warning for spoilers for Iron Man]

It starts in the sky, several hundred feet up. There's a light and a bang, and something appears.

It's metal (though not actually iron), and roughly man-sized (and -shaped), and its colouring is a bright mixture of gold (an alloy, actually) and red (hot rod). It's also falling.

And shouting. "JARVIS–!"

As it tumbles towards the Earth various rockets and stabilizers fire and misfire, with pfft! pfft! sounds like fireworks going off. They do very little – something's been knocked about, jumbled. Internal systems are scrambling to pick up navigational landmarks, satellite signals, air traffic transmissions, anything that would give a clue as to where here is and how far down is down. But there's nothing to pick up. It's like the whole world's gone radio-silent.

Locked in an uncontrolled spin, something within the metal man shouts, "Stabilize, damn it, stabilize!" It throws its arms up to fire palm-mounted boosters: coupled with flaring back-mounted spoilers, these halt the spin, but not the fall. Which means that the metal man now has a really good view of the ground that is rushing up to meet his face.

This is going to hurt.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, trust me, you'll get warning before it fades. Spirit blessings don't cut out all at once. Bad for business."

Seeing as they're protective, and you don't want a mortal left sitting in the middle of a fire / ice-storm / the goddamn sky with a surprised look on their face as they char, freeze, or splat. 'Cause then their buddies won't burn you delicious incense.

Speaking of which, Sky may be sniffing the air thoughtfully. Tony's suit does not produce nasty exhaust! She approves!

"You're good for at least a day until it wears off," she continues. "More if I like you, and I'm starting to think I do."

...seriously, flirting with the mortals. Why. No. Bad. Fundamental incompatibilities.

Is it possible that the glowing electromagnet nestled in Tony's chest has had the side effect of increasing his natural animal magnetism? Only time will tell!

Regardless, he doesn't exactly look unhappy about Sky's proclamation, one way or another.

"O-kay. I'll be right back."

The helmet slides shut, and for a moment he hangs there in silence. All across the suit lights dim and go black – except the big one in his chest, that never fades – and then snap back on. There's a low mechanical whirr, and the spoilers along his back start to move, testing the air.

"Now that's much better," comes Tony's voice from inside the suit, tinny once more. "I think I should be able to fly properly now, I should probably do a test to be –"

Various rockets power up, cutting him off: he zooms forward a short distance before bringing himself into an upright position, hands out at his sides for balance.

"Oh yeah. We're in business."

Sky whistles honest approval, applauding vigorously.

(It... sounds kind of lame. Hands made of air, and all.)

She also swirls over and grins impishly at him.

"Race you, flying man," she suggests. "You pick the goalposts."

Man, she always picks the bestest mortals to give the kiss of blessing to, doesn't she just.

"Well I should probably get out of this suit and do a full systems check, to be sure. So I need to get back to my lab. And Malibu is..."

On the suit's HUD, backup nav systems are taking effect, calculating things like compass direction, location of the sun, visible natural landmarks on the ground far below.

"It's..."

Ah, hell with it.

"This way!"

And he zooms off.

Snapwhoosh.

Okay, air spirit racing mortal? Probably not fair.

Especially not because that's Sky's blurred-as-hell outline doing looping barrel rolls around his suit. Mockingly.

(He hasn't gone supersonic yet, or she wouldn't be giggling. There actually are limits to her speed, much as she wouldn't like to admit it.)

"Oh, I see. You're mocking me, is that how it is?"

He tumbles into a controlled spin to one side, trying (and likely failing) to out-maneuver her. This is what it's all about: the speed, the rush. Like racing Happy to the Stark Industries campus in his Audi R8 just because he can.

He pushes for faster, faster, as much as he can without kicking in the supersonics.

"If I can't mock mortals what the hell am I good for?" she chirps.

And okay, shutting up now, because damn he's fast.

(If he were an air spirit she would so be propositioning him.)

She can still keep up, but perhaps not quite so gaudily, and is that Malibu on the horizon (what's left of it at least) yes it is thank fuck oh perhaps she should've mentioned the widespread destruction right well he's finding out now isn't he.

(Air spirits don't need lungs to think, either.)

Ah, now that coastline he recognizes, as they head up the curve of California from the south. There's Los Angeles, and there's –

Wait.

No.

And he does bring the supersonic jets online now, speeding like a missile towards the devastation below.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Okay, abandoning visible form, shifting presence through chains of air molecules as fast as she can manage, wow this is disorienting but she has to get there by the time he does okay he's stopped get visible again right.

"Not your world," she says immediately, still wavering at the edges like a mirage. "You've been transported to an alternate universe, everything's fine back home, yes shit sucks here but it's been sucking for a while and we're used to it. Sorry. My bad. I should've said something earlier."

He's stopped alright, hovering above the ruins of the once-thriving city. It used to be filled with noise and life. Now It's just silent and dead.

"Who did this?" he asks, and his voice booms and echoes against the half-walls of crumpled buildings. "Was it them? Was it the Ten Rings?"

His universe or some other, doesn't matter. If this world is as close to his own as it's seemed so far, maybe here he didn't experience his – literal and figurative – change of heart soon enough.

~~Oh Tony, your ego is positively galactic.~~

"No. Near as anybody can figure, the flashbangs just started happening around August. They don't hit Kansas, for some obscure reason I haven't been able to figure out, and if anybody started them up on purpose they're probably dead by now."

"Flashbangs. What kind of – I mean, there are about a hundred different kinds of weapon currently in common circulation that might cause that kind of effect alone, and that's common circulation, not the ones you can find more underhandedly –"

He needs to know the answer to: Did I do this too?

"You need to be more specific."

"It doesn't get more specific. Remember how you got here? Loud noise, bright light? They happen randomly, everywhere. Bringing in people, buildings, vehicles, goddamn rocks on occasion. Anything you can think of, from anywhere-- alternate worlds, all of 'em."

"That's how I got here? I figured I'd just been fired upon by an F-22."

He turns in place, taking in more of the wreckage.

"So what destroyed the city?"

"Coastal city, dude. Check the tentacle marks. The oceans are crawling with nasties-- kraken mostly, a couple other things I can't identify."

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. You'll have to excuse me, I'm not in the habit of checking for tentacle marks."

It's hard to tell if he's being sarcastic. To be honest he's too distracted to put the proper effort into it. Then, suddenly –

"Oh, shit, the lab!"

He blasts off at top speed up the coast once more.

Aaaaaaaand off she goes, forward-shifting too quickly to talk along the way, waiting for him to stop again so she can explain that his lab is almost certainly not there.

[ooc: It would be kind of hilarious to flashbang the lab in just after they arrive... *grins*]

Stark Industries may be there, it might not. But that place is not the one that's on Tony's mind right now.

He takes to the coast, his shadow far below flickering over highways, beaches, ocean waves. The speed he's going it's no time at all to get to Malibu, and then it's just a matter of following the coastline.

He doesn't slow until – there.

Is that his mansion?

Is it actually intact?

Is it?

Sky tags along beside him, blurred almost beyond recognition. She'd be panting if she had lungs.

"What's up? Something here from home?"

Tony draws to a stop, some ways away, high above the ocean.

"It's..."

He hesitates. It's something he doesn't do very often.

"My house. I think. But we replaced the windows on the south wall two years ago, and those looks like they haven't been changed. So maybe it's-- I should look inside."

It takes him a second longer to fully convince himself, and then he starts forwards again.

At the exact moment the flashbangs return.

"...aw, shit."

Dinosaurs.

Lots of them.

Like, ten.

Big stompy dinosaurs.

Hell if Sky knows what to call them; she was never into all that nerdy human stuff.

But those ones have great big long necks to balance their great big long tails, and there's one with a big blunt head and tiny wiggly arms that even she recognizes as a T-rex*, and they appear to be fighting it out in what was, a moment ago, Tony Stark's house.

And is now a pile of rubble and roaring dinosaur.

*Sorry, Sky. It's actually one'a these (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcharodontosaurus).

"MY HOUSE!"

Tony stops short, then starts, then flies around a bit, circling the mansion.

"Dinosaurs! What the hell! A gang of dinosaurs just showed up on my – are they – OY! I HAVE SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF COMPUTER AND DESIGN EQUIPMENT IN THERE, NOT TO MENTION THE CARS AND THE COLLECTION OF JACKSON POLLACKS AND – AND THE PIANO! DID I MENTION THE PIANO? AND WHO'S GONNA PAY ME BACK, DINOSAURS? YOU? NO! YOU HAVE TINY ARMS AND NO BANK ACCOUNTS!"

The Carcharodontosauri, however, are not listening.

~~And when her narration is finished giggling madly to itself...~~

Sky is just going to be... staring.

Man, this guy can rant impressively.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, go the dinosaurs.

High above, Tony's shoulders slump, at least as much as the suit allows. In a much less shouty fashion, he says, "This is going to be trouble."

There's an impressively musical crash as something steps on his piano. Sky winces.

"Yeah. Uh. Sorry about your house, man."